Bullets and Brass
by Kai White
Summary: The backstory of Cygnaran Warcaster Captain Allister Caine.


_Fire was everywhere. The house was burning. He heard his sister cry out as she was scorched. He heard his mother call her name in agony. His father's body lay oddly before him in a way that bodies never normally lay. Two men stood before him, hulking, towering over him, their forms silhouetted by the flames behind them. His mother screamed. The man in front of him let out a harsh chuckle. The smoke burned his eyes, and a small fire burned deep in his chest. Despite the firelight, the room got darker. He was falling. _

Allister Caine sprang up in his bed, cracking his head on the bunk above his. Cursing quietly, he fell back into his pillow, awkwardly watching the stars form in his eyes. He thought back to that night. The night he'd lost everything in that fire. Everything he'd ever loved, incinerated.

Rubbing his throbbing head, he felt a warm sticky fluid touch his fingers. Sighing to himself, he rolled out of bed and hobbled barefoot toward the washbasins. The dark blue light of early dawn was already rolling over the windowsill into the barrack rooms. The bugle would be sounding soon, marking his two hundredth day in basic training. Two hundred days closer to revenge.

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"Form up!" called the drill sergeant. The sun had just lazily made its way to the sky. The morning light saw four ranks of men and women standing at attention in their blue trench coats, and tri cornered hats, each with a pack on their back that was so large, it nearly touched the face of the soldier behind him. However, none showed the slightest sign of fatigue. None dared. "To show weakness is to show the need for more work!" the drill sergeant often took pleasure in saying.

He was a large man, the Drill Sergeant. MacAvoy was his name, and he stood a decent head and shoulders above most of them. His chiseled musculature was evidence of his never-ending work both at the academe and on the field. What he had in brawn though, he lacked in brains. He was quick with a somewhat witty retort that usually made only enough sense to be partially relevant, and his concept of magic was even worse than that of the new recruits he was training. To him, it was all overrated. "Nothing a good chain gun couldn't do better!" he'd say. Luckily, he was only there for their physical training.

It was not uncommon for a group of recruits to spend their first year in physical training. The Old King's lackluster view of gun mages resulted in poor funding, and furthermore, poor training. That had led to several years' worth of gun mages being the "pansies" of the Cygnaran Army. Most being noble's children, they'd rarely done a hard day's work in their lives, so once it came to running about in the field and marching for days on end, the majority of them had passed out before even seeing combat. When King Leto took the throne, he'd made sure to rectify this terrible problem and in these days of relative peace, they could afford to extend the ' mages' training to include a year of near trencher like physical abuse. Just to ensure it, the king had even hired an ex-trencher to do the job.

And so, here stood young Al, on his second hundredth day of training, in the early morning light. He'd pushed his hat down further than usual to hide the gash on his forehead, but it apparently hadn't worked, as MacAvoy didn't even do a double take as he passed, simply pulling Al by the collar out in front of the rest.

"'Been getting' into fights again, Private Caine?" he snarled, ignoring him for a moment to look over the rest of his charge.

"Sir," he neither confirmed nor denied it, he only stood, somewhat at ease, waiting for the lecture. This wasn't the first time, and by now, the rest of the platoon could probably recite it.

"Got yourself a good knock on the head this time, eh?" he asked, finally turning to look at him.

"Should've seen the other guy, sir." He'd snapped back to attention just a little too late, averting his eyes to the spot substantially higher than the sergeant's head.

"Think you're smart, Private Caine? Think you're too good for the rest of us?" he asked, poking him in the chest with two sausage fingers and, shoving his face into Al's so that he had no choice but to look into his eyes. "Prove it."

"Sir?" Al asked, watching the Sergeant turn back to the recruits.

"I'm tired of your shit, Private Caine," he said simply, unbuckling his own substantial pack, and setting it on the ground. "If you're such a hot shot, prove it. Beat my rickety old ass!"

Al took a moment to consider, but barely a thought had flown through his mind before he ripped off his pack. He'd just been given permission to fight an officer. Not just an officer, but the most annoying, spearhead in his side, asshole of an officer he'd ever had the displeasure of knowing. Even if the colossus beat the shit out of him, he wasn't going to miss this opportunity. He unbuttoned his coat, and threw it, with his hat, toward his pack as MacAvoy turned and walked towards him.

He dropped to a familiar hand-to-hand stance; one he'd been in for two hours every day for the last two hundred days. The Sergeant didn't bother. Walking straight up to the Private, he took a lumbering swing at his head. Caine ducked it quickly, but didn't see the massive knee that hit him in the side. Adjusting quickly, he regained his posture. The Sergeant swung again. This time, Al ducked to the outside of the blow, sending his own jab up just below the Sergeant's ribs. The shot had barely made contact, however, when the elbow he'd just avoided dug right into his gashed head. Stumbling back several feet, Caine took a second to shake the light from his eyes before falling back to his stance.

"I taught you how to fight, boy," the Sergeant smirked, strolling the few feet between them. "I know everything you're going to do."

It was true, he realized, ducking around another shot. Before he'd come to the academe, he'd only been scrapping on dockyards. At best, he'd learned to fight dirty there.

_Well_, he thought, _at best, MacAvoy wouldn't expect me to fight dirty_. _It's worth a shot_.

Caine ducked below another punch, dropping all formality, and rushed in towards the giant. Dodging the knee that came for him, he kicked with all of his might right into the Sergeant's crotch. The mammoth wasn't able to withhold the small grunt that crept out, and Caine used that small moment to jack him square in the nose.

MacAvoy ducked out, regaining his senses, and pulled himself back several feet. Caine watched as he wiped blood from his nose. He didn't bother to reprimand his pupil, though. Al knew it was because if this were a battlefield, he'd have just killed the giant.

Taking more caution this time, Drill Sergeant MacAvoy took up his fighting stance, pulling his fists close to his face. "You're alright, boy," he spat, almost in disgust, "but I've taken on winter guard and pirates alike, and you aren't shit compared to them."

As the Sergeant advanced, it came to Al like some comical dream. The lumbering trencher had taken on all manner of non-magical enemies. He was likely the first magically apt opponent he'd had in a good five years. _Well this aught to show him what magic's about_, Al thought.

Quickly, he swiped his hand through the air. Behind it, his image fogged over and blurred, as if he were behind a dirty screen. As the titan swung at him, the shot was already a good half of a foot away from his head. Caine took the mistake to his advantage, boxing his teacher below the sternum as he avoided his boot. Spinning around, he took a couple shots at the man's ribs before kicking in the back of his knee.

MacAvoy, meanwhile, was unable to keep up, swinging clumsily at the blanket of distorted images around him. As he fell to his knees, Al's own boot shot right into his face. His head shot back, and he felt a deafening blow strike his ear. Temporarily blind, and now half deaf, the officer held up his hand.

Seeing the Sergeant's sign of defeat, Al moved behind him, let go of his spell, and looked, quite smugly, down at his commanding officer's crouched form.  
"Private Caine!" Drill Sergeant MacAvoy spat in the most formal manner he could muster, "Report to me after today's activities for disciplinary action! Now get back in line!"

Al used the moment it took the jackass to recover to put his uniform back on along with his weighted backpack. As he returned to his spot, he caught sight of the mixed faces of his peers. Some were happy the officer'd been shown what's what. Most, however, shot daggers at Al, for they knew today's workout would be four times as hard for all of them, thanks to his actions.

And indeed it was.

For this day, they did not spend their usual hour running around the courtyard, followed by the standard two hours of rigorous hand-to-hand combat training, before breaking for lunch and chores. Today, Sergeant MacAvoy ran them through the halls of the academe itself. This included every single hallway, large, unoccupied room, and flight of stairs in the Strategic Academe's twenty floors. They, of course, couldn't just remain at the top of the castle, however, and so the Sergeant thought it would be nice to run them back down the entire castle in the exact same manner. He stayed right with them the entire time, keeping up in back, kicking any stragglers in the ass, and helping anyone who fell to the ground in exhaustion to regain their footing. By the time they'd gotten to roof of the building, all of them had lost their lunch, many of them ran with a limp, and just a few of them were missing the fistfuls of hair the sergeant had dragged them up by.

After this brisk three-hour jog, the Sergeant made a point of extending the hand-to-hand training, claiming they all needed to learn from Private Caine's example, and pick up their skills. It was for this reason that the Sergeant himself joined in every sparring match, giving most of his command a black eye or bloody nose before the day was over.

It was finally after this extended exercise of pain that the group was broken up to go about their chores for two hours, before returning for their evening sessions. And it was at this point that Drill Sergeant MacAvoy ordered Private Allister Caine to report to the warehouses for his Disciplinary Detention.


End file.
